The preview has been shipped off to app makers and it has an improved memory management tool in Settings.

This shows the apps that are running and how much memory they are using, along with how much RAM on average an app is using.

Obviously the more memory used, the slower your phone will run, so identifying memory hogging apps and closing them will actually improve the lot of android users.

Lollipop suffered from memory leaks and apps which sucked up memory and drained batteries even when the devices were not being used. It does have memory management tools but these were of limited use, hard to find and people didn't.

Developer Preview 2 also adds in a few other changes. There is the Android M app launcher, which scrolls vertically rather than the more standard horizontal direction of previous versions of Android. It has lost the letters that allowed you to jump alphabetically to apps.

Themes has been hidden away. We are not sure what that would do, or how it would be useful to god or man.

A top development blog has revealed that there is a climate of fear among the developer community about criticising the fruity cargo cult Apple's slumping software standards.

Eli Schiff who is better known for his design work said that critics of Apple software were having to bury their criticisms for face the wrath of the company.

"Critics go on to reverse their opinions and praise the products of modern minimalist UI design because it is more convenient not to risk questioning powerful industry leaders," Schiff wrote.

For example Marco Arment engaged his critical faculties toward, what is in his opinion, the "rapid decline of Apple's software." He argued that Apple has "Lost the Functional High Ground," ignoring of course that they already lost the aesthetic-usability high ground. He explained, "I'm not looking forward to OS X 10.11 or iOS 9 — I'm afraid of the bugs they'll bring and the basic functions they'll render unreliable."

However after the story was published he updated it with a label that reads "I regret having published this." He continued, "I should feel good about this, but I don't. I inadvertently caused a shitstorm of negativity, and it feels horrible."

Arment said that he did not want to be known for criticising Apple – it was just not worth it. Arment also said he was scared of having damaged his relationship with Apple

UK developer Matt Wilcox, who wrote a similar piece said that he noticed someone from Cupertino appear on his web analytics page and suddenly he was scared of offending Apple.

This climate of fear comes at a time that developers are realising that there are only approximately 3000 apps profitable enough to support a median income of $50k for their developer.

David Barnard, the creator ofLaunch Center Pro, who pointed out that developers were so frightened of Apple they don't even publicly share all the crazy rejections for fear of reprisal from Apple.

Part of the problem is the rare material which comes from Apple. Apple's App Store Review Guidelines, reported to be written by Senior Vice President Phil Schiller, threatens developers who show Apple up in the press. "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."

Even when Apple behaves badly to developers and they have to complain, they feel they have to praise the company at the same time as they moan.

For example James Allworth, a former Strategist for Apple had to say:"I'm generally pro-Apple. I love what they do, I'm completely invested in their ecosystem, I loved working there previously."

However that was before he said: "Apple's former Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki had a mailing list of devout Apple employees and fanatics would go about promoting Apple's interests by destroying the opposition.

Allworth described what was expected of him when Kawasaki would rouse the mailing list:

"I was one of the ones that used to send emails to journalists that said anything other than kind things about Apple. Like they used to post negative articles about Apple and a whole horde of Apple proponents would bear down upon this poor unsuspecting soul."

In other-words Apple was running a Scientology-like programme to destroy journalists and developers who were seen as threats to the faith.

Capcom wants to develop a larger number of its games internally, and the company has announced to that end a plan to add 1,000 additional developers by 2023.

The company says that the new developers will be split over each of its software development divisions, with Home Video Games, Mobile Contents, and PC Online Gaming to all get significant increases in staff. This is part of what the publisher is embarking on in its 10-year plan.

In part, the decision to move in this direction is to counter the criticism the company has received about the quality of titles that have been developed by Capcom using these external developers. The company believes it will have better control and much better quality by keeping it all in-house.

While the change will not really affect the amount of spend the company puts toward the development of new titles, it will, however, change the way the money is spent. With the addition of 1,000 developers, Capcom will grow to almost 2,500 developers (from approximately 1,500 developers that it employs today).

Our take is that it remains to be seen if this will really help Capcom produce better software. While it sounds good, it is hard to say if it will deliver the results that Capcom is looking for. We will have to just wait and see if the improvement yields more hits, better review scores, and more sales for the company.

After Electronic Arts took the wraps off the fact that it had acquired the UFC license from THQ E3, everyone wanted to know what EA’s plan was. After all, THQ said that it had never been able to make money on a UFC title that it released and EA would need to do much better than that if they were going to take over the franchise going forward.

Now we know more than we did back at E3, and much of what we thought would come to pass is coming to pass. First, it comes as no surprise that EA Canada in Burnaby (which is home to the Fight Night boxing franchise) will be heading the development of the new UFC title. This will be under a new fighting team at EA that will be led by creative director Brian Hayes.

The “Fight Team” will be responsible for both the Fight Night and UFC titles, which comes as no surprise, and actually we predicted as much when EA picked up the UFC rights. It isn’t known yet if they will employ the strategy that EA had originally talked about where Fight Night and MMA titles would alternate yearly releases; but we suspect that we will have to see how well the first UFC title does for EA before that decision is made.

The new UFC title from EA will be called “EA Sports UFC” and we still have no idea when it will be released; but it would seem that next year is very possible if they use the EA MMA engine that they already have, which is based on the Fight Night engine. If not, we might have to wait till the Xbox Next/720 and PS4 arrive before we see the first EA UFC title.

We have been hearing whispers for some time that Thief 4 has been in development at Eidos Montreal, but there has been little to confirm that this. Now, from an article that appeared on Kotaku, it would appear that the rumors of development difficulties could be accurate.

What seems to be the word now is that the game has been in development for nearly four years, and a number of people associated with the project have since departed. It seems the mess is complicated by a trailer that was leaked after it never was officially released. It has been suggested that Thief 4 was slated for a 2011 appearance but was pulled for reasons that still remain unknown.

With Deus Ex: Human Revolutions taking so long to make it out the door, one has to wonder what is going on, with still no official comment from Square Enix. While we have heard everything from ‘it is done, but it isn’t very good,’ to ‘it needs significant debugging and polish before it would ever be released.’ It is hard to know where the bear really sits. Stay tuned, as we hear from lurkers in the shadows that official comment is coming soon; and that might even end with a cancellation of the project altogether.

Microsoft has been promising developers that developing a Metro-style application for upcoming Windows ARM PCs is the same as developing Metro applications for PCs running Intel processors.

Writing in his blog, Microsoft corporate vice president Jason Zander pledges an “identical development experience.” He said that developing an app for Windows on ARM is the same as developing a Metro-style app for x86/64 PCs.

The same Metro-style app will run on either hardware. Many Visual Studio methods used to build other application types will carry over to the construction of Metro-style apps.

He said that Microsoft's upcoming Visual Studio 2012 IDE will support ARM development and it will not matter if you use JavaScript, C++, Visual Basic, or C#. “If you've built a Metro-style app that targets x86/x64, then you already know how to build one that targets ARM," Zander said.

However with Visual Studio still consigned to only running on Intel machines, developers will need to use remote debugging, Zander said. They must first install Remote Tools for Visual Studio RC onto the ARM device. A developer license for ARM also is needed, he added.

After a five year court battle over Unreal Engine 3, a judge has awarded Epic Games $4.45 Million. Sources have told the Escapist magazine that Human developer Silicon Knights will have to pay Epic Games $4.45 million in damages.

Silicon Knights hoped to make $54 million from suing Epic. Instead it owes them a lot of cash. The ruling followed two recent case milestones, neither of which had foreshadowed much hope for Silicon Knights.

Last week, the court ruled that due to an invalid expert testimony, no claim against Epic could be awarded more than a dollar in recompense. All claims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, unfair competition, and unfair and deceptive trade practices previously levied were dismissed outright.

Epic remained tight-lipped regarding the specifics of its counterclaims since the announcement of their filing in 2007. Most of the claims centered around copyright infringement of the Unreal Engine 3's code.

Silicon Knights' initial lawsuit depended on the fact that Epic had misrepresented the engine, forcing it's developers to build a better one from scratch. Epic claimed that during this time, Silicon Knights had full access to the Unreal Engine 3's code, and may have infringed upon it while reconstructing the core of Too Human. It looks like the Judge believed them.

DICE has confirmed that they will be dropping a massive update for Battlefield 3. It will be rolling out June 4th and 5th for all formats and platforms at once, according to the developer.

The patch comes ahead of the next expansion pack and the Battlefield Premium announcement that is planned for E3. The update encompasses a large amount of changes, including the M26 being fixed and the performance of the F35 in Back to Karkand is now equal to that of the SU35.

DICE has published the full change log so that you can see what to expect as a part of this patch. There is so much to this patch we suggest that you study the change log to get better familiar with it.

RuffianGames, which is the studio best known for Crackdown 2, has apparently landed a new contract for a high-profile triple A title. While it isn’t yet known what this new title will be or which publisher has contracted with the Scottish studio, we see that the studio is ramping up hiring.

Beyond the revolution that the new title will be a multi-platform offering, everyone seems to know that this project is in addition to Crackdown 3 (which is apparently in development). Work on this new title will be done by a second team at the studio as hiring continues for this project.

While the original ads placed by the studio confirmed the new project, they have since been changed to make them more generic as to what these positions will be working on. Look to hear more about this in the E3 time frame, according to the whispers we are hearing.

SOCOM developer Zipper Interactive, based in Redmond, Washington, has been hit with about 30 layoffs. Sony has apparently decided to continue with its aggressive workforce reductions, and that has pretty much hit all of the Sony studios by now.

While sources confirm that long-time Zipper Interactive employee Travis Steiner left to start his own company, we hear that other employees may also follow. The remaining employees will continue to work on the support for the recently released titles and work on the development of new titles.

While Sony is spinning this as a standard reduction in staff, whispers we hear suggest that sales of SOCOM 4 have not been what Sony would have liked, and this has led to the decision to trim staff. Some blame the poor sales of SOCOM 4 on Sony’s decision not to bundle the Sharpshooter access device for PlayStation Move with the game itself. According to some we have spoken with, making it two separate purchases hurt sales in a big way.